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I found a 700gr hatchet in a market that had an elongated and teardrop "eye" for the handle with a beatiful shape. I took it with the idea of modifying it and obtaining a bearded one with the addition of a steel beard obtained from the leafspring of a truck thick enough to be forged. then I cut away a piece of the bevel of the purchased axe and welded the leafspring. then I forged the new bevel, reshape the profile, heat treated and sharpened it. with a nice piece of walnut I made the curved handle and with a piece of lthick leather a sheath to protect the edge (and myself). for those who want more details I also made a video of the various steps:

My end of a trade with a friend. We have done a lot of blacksmithing together and wanted a piece of each other's work (especially now that we live very far apart). So we decided to each make a knife for the other. He designed the handle carving to have urnes period viking style hawk and deer. It is a bit difficult to see the carving in the handle as the grain in the burl tends to hide it. This is a replacement for his everyday carry knife that broke, so it is a fairly simple blade that should be pretty useful for mostly anything. His original design sketch for the handle The final result

Some of you who attended the Swords through the centuries event last weekend got to see most of these. I've since replaced all my containers with archival safe foam and materials thanks to Mr. Shea donating some scraps of ethafoam he had. It's nothing like Jeff Pringle's collection, but it's my own =) A fellow nearby me who is conserving a viking sword and scabbard pieces recently unearthed let me onto the fact that there's some fairly reasonable priced authentic viking pieces coming out of Estonia and Latvia on ebay right now, and so I've got another couple axe heads coming my way after bidding on them in the last few weeks as well =) http://www.tharkis.com/images/viking/thumbs.py Here's everything in it's new home (the dark foam next to it is a softer foam which goes on top to keep stuff from moving when the box is closed and not sitting down) Here's one axe head, not in that great shape, and like most of my artifacts, not yet stabilized. This is my spear head, which was stabilized with electrolysis , which unfortunately makes it hard to tell, but there's evidence that it has a pattern welded core, but it's very hard to tell if its' patern welding or if it's very long strands of impurities. The parallel nature and the length of the lines makes me believe it's not just a grain ala wrought however. the most prevelant modern conservation techniques tend to mask / eliminate evidence of pattern welding. Here's a pair of small blades. A small axe head in very bad shape Some bronze belt hardware. Several tongue ends, one set with very nice knotwork engraving, two with very distinctive Viking triangles with 3 dots inside. There are some leather remnants still attached to a few pieces, importantly the join plate in the top right corner clearly shows how, as suspected with many Viking belts, it was created from shorter pieces of leather joined with plates. The leather between the plates is still intact with very clean cut ends between the two halves. The iron tongue has rotted away on the belt buckle, but next to it are some fairly rare hangars , which would have been used to hang other equipment, fire starters, knife sheaths, etc, to the belt. As small as all the pieces are, the level of detal on them is great, with fine lines around all the edges. The buckle has nice stipple work on the face, the 2 hangars on the left have very nice octohedral botoms.

Hi all ! It's my first post on this forum so I wanted to say hello and show you my pattern welded seax which I finished few days ago. Total length 47cm, blade 32cm Width 3,2 cm Maciej Leszczyński - Kuźnia Wilkowo

I finally got another blade out the door. This one was a commission for a very patient customer (Thorvaldr). I guess I'd call it a heavily historical fantasy seax. The blade is Aldo's 1084. It's 10" long, flat grind, 1/4" spine. It does taper ever so slightly from the peak of the spine back to the handle, but it's barely noticeable. The blade has younger futhark runes inlaid in nu gold (15% zinc, 80% copper). On the right side they say "Thorvaldr owns me" and on the left "MHB made me". The customer had his previous seax stolen so maybe have his name inlaid in the blade will deter theft / aid recovery. The handle consists of a cast bronze front plate I soldered on, a section of moose antler I carved with a dremel and dyed with potassium permanganate, a bronze spacer, carved cherry with burned edges, another spacer, more moose, and another cast plate. I unfortunately took only a couple WIP pics. These are all the handle components before assembly. The tang is thick all the way back to 1/3 way through the second moose antler section. After that I threaded it for a washer and nut. Everything fit fairly tightly dry, and then I coated everything with a tin layer of acraglass and assembled. You can kinda see it in the pic above, but the assembly is finished by putting the washer and nut on after the end moose antler and tightening them. This hold the whole thing together tightly even without the acraglass. With the acraglass filling in the little spaces and then filling up the space around the nut it should hold together for a long time. The end piece is nailed in place with 4 bronze nails and some acraglass. i drilled the holes exactly the diameter of the nails so they got good friction but didn't risk splitting the antler. The sheath is 8oz cowhide wet-formed to the seax, embossed, and dyed. All the fittings are hand stamped from bronze sheet except for the ring, which I carved and cast. Yeah, it took me a long freakin' time to finish this puppy. There are mistakes I'm not happy with (notice how the plates on the sheath don't line up right?), but overall I'm very pleased with it, and so is the new owner.

One of my latest ones, big boy blade

Finally got some time in the shop, so I made a sheath and knife inspired by Viking finds from Gotland. The blade is commercial as I don't have a forge where I live at the moment, but I use them as cheap options to practice my fit and finish on handles and sheaths. There are a lot of 'first time' elements in this and there are definitely things I am not happy with, I can see where I lost focus. The handle is from reclaimed Birch, fittings are brass and the suspension ring is bronze. Leather is vegetable tan.

Greetings everyone, I’ve got a commission that has started me down the multi-bar road, so I thought I’d try and do a WIP. The commission is for an anglo-taxon style broken back seax with an 18” or so blade. I decided to do a basic 3 bar blade with wrought iron on the top, a twist in the middle, and high layer count on the bottom: I made my 3 bars, the middle being 36 layers of 15N20 and 1095, and the edge was 432 layer of the same. I tried using hose clamps to hold the bar together and I thought it worked really well. I forged out the blade about 70% of the way and realized I had been forging upside down - d’oh! Nice wrought iron edge. I did what I could to recover something from the mess, and ended up with these two blades: The smaller one is 6 1/4” (158mm), and the larger one is... well, larger (I forgot to measure it). I'm very happy with the pattern, thought I wanted tighter twists. Learned Lesson #1 - make sure you clearly mark which way side is the edge and which is the spine. Attempt #2: So I started again, same plan. As I was forging I realized I had a gap opening up between the edge bar and the twist in a particular area of the bar. I realized that was where the bar had not been square, but had gone diamond shaped on me. I tried rewelding it a couple times with mixed success. One spot just wouldn’t stick even after soaking overnight in vinegar and then fluxing heavily. So I had to shorten the blade to 14” (355mm) to put that spot in the tang: I hit the split with the TIG welder in the tang. A tiny bit goes into the blade, but it’s only on one side, and there is another small weld flaw a bit farther up, but again it was only on one side, so I left it. BTW, thanks to Emilliano Carrillo for coaching me through all these problems via text :-) Learned Lesson #2 - square-up your bars before welding them together. So, attempt # 3. Third time was a charm: I made sure my bars were square, cleaned the sides to be welded carefully, And hammered gently when forging until the billet had enough time/heat for the welds to really set. I did my best to normalize the blade, but I had to do it in sections because it was so long. Then it soaked overnight in vinegar to remove the scale and on to grinding. It took me about 4 hours of grinding to get it down to where I wanted it. I forged it a bit thick on purpose so I could grind past all the surface wrinkles and such caused by the patterns & welds. I ended up with this: The tang had to be cut because I can only fit 23” in my heat treat kiln. This has very light etch on it to show the pattern because the next step was a wire inlay of runes. The customer happens to be an expert in Old English, so I trade him the pattern welding of the blade for a low volume of his translation services in perpetuity. His last name happens to be Bishop, and we decided this blade would be named “Bishop’s Boar”, which he translated into “bisceopes eofor”. I printed out the runes on the computer so the spacing would be correct, and taped them to the place i wanted them on the blade. I then cut through the paper with a utility knife to mark them on the blade. It works surprisingly well, and doesn’t rub off. I cut the runes with a Gravermax engraver. They are pricey, but are pretty much the equivalent of a power hammer for engraving. You can do so much more work so much faster. My technique is pretty basic. I’m inlaying 22ga wire which is about 1mm in diameter, so I cut the grooves 1mm wide and half mm deep. As wide as the wire and half as deep seems to be a goodformula no matter what width the wire is. This is essentially how I cut the grooves. I always try to cut to another groove if I can, and i take 2-3 passes to get down the half millimeter. You have to be gentle when engraving or you snap points Once you have the grooves cut you need to make them into a dovetail to hold the wire. I’ve tried a number of techniques, but the one that seems to work the best for me is Matt Parkinson’s - just come in from the opposite side at a 45 degree angle with a chisel directed into the bottom corner of the groove. It’s nice because the metal tends to raise up when you do it so you get visual confirmation that you’ve done it. It also holds the wire the tightest according to my yank-on-it tests. I hammer the wire in with a hammer made of graver stock. Just like a regular hammer it needs a smooth face with no sharp corners. This is what I end up with. You should be able to tug on the wire and have it not pop out. If it does, clip it off, recut your dovetails, and start again. Super short piece will pull out easier than long ones, so be gentler with them. The most important detail here is that that i leave the wire proud of the grooves. After heat treat the wire will be dead soft from quenching, and you can do another round of hammering to get it just a little farther and tighter into the grooves. Here it is completed. And here are the tools I used: Channel cutting graver on the bottom right, chisel for setting the dovetails on the bottom left, hammer on the top, and flush cut jewelers snips for cutting the wire off. Heat treat was done in a kiln with an argon atmosphere. The argon prevents decarburizing and eliminates most of the scale. Here’s the inlay after heat treat and a second round of hammering the wire. This inlay took a total of 5 hours even with a Gravermax and some experience. I machine sanded the whole blade to 240grit, then started at 220 by hand and went down to 600. Etched it for 4 10 minutes sessions in ferric chloride, then hit it with a 1000grit stone and then 1500grit sandpaper. Up next is the handle, which will be cast bronze with an attempt at faux-garnet inlay and carved bog wood. We'll see how that goes...

This was a very pleasant commission to work on for me. I could practice a little more of inlaying and the results got better than i could anticipate, even if I have much to evolve in this art. The blade was mostly done by stock removal, but the tip and the tang were forged prior to the grinding. It was made using 1070 steel. The hilt is of a variation of Petersen's type L and it's components are made in mild steel and the inlays are nickel silver. The twisted wires are also nickel silver. It was then oil coated and lightly heated to make it look darker, so the contrast with the cooper-alloy would be even more visible. It is also a good way to prevent rust. My signature this time went on the inside of the lower guard, as the blade carries my maker's name. And on the pommel is asymmetrical in decoration: one side carries a similar decoration to the guards and the other a "double Týr" bind rune. The idea of peening it on the pommel cap is also a historical method, but I made it mainly because it would be more secure than peening the upper guard and attaching the pommel cap to it. The handle is pine wood wrapped in cord and then covered with pig skin. The scabbard is also pinewood, as well as it's belt-bridge. It is lined inside with natural wool and covered with linen cloth. The chape is also mild steel and the bridge is held by leather strips. All the decorations were made to fit a late ninth century fashion, although it is a simplification of the Borre style rather than a more elaborate version. The runes on the blade are inspired mainly on inscriptions of later, 10th and 11th century blades commonly made in Latin language such as Ingelri or Gecelin, but also inspired on the famous Tizona of El Cid and the Cortana from the legend of Holger Danske when it comes in the naming process of it. The use of the runes or local language was a choice of the owner, although I'm aware of only a single sword with runic inscriptions from the period (according to Petersen, B1622), but I have no access to what is written on this exemplar. They read: ik er ulfsmoþRin (Ek er UlfsmóðrRinn - I am the Wrath of the Wolf) hioruarþR kirosi mik (Hjörvarðr gerosi mek - Hjörvarðr made me) They are all written in old norse and I used the danish long-twig young futhork to write them. The sword was exposed at one of the biggest blade shows here in Brazil, where it was awarded the prize of Best Sword of the show and is indeed a proud weapon to display, as well as is swift and powerful to wield. As usual, I wrote a short tale for this blade that can be read here: http://vferreiraarruda.blogspot.com.br/2017/08/ulfsmor-wrath-of-wolf.html I hope you like it. And here are the stats of it. Overall length: 94,0cm Blade length: 79,7cm Blade width: 5,4cm Blade thickness at the guard: 0,5cm PoB: 17,2cm Length of the grip: 10,3cm Weight: 1,150kg

Hey everyone, just finished, or finished the rough finish on my "viking" axe, which now looks slightly more like a generic tomahawk sort of. As a beginner with only weeks of experience, I'd call this a major success and boosts my morale for gaining more and more experience. Obviously compared to most work on this forum this is in the range of bad to mediocre, but I'm pretty proud of it. Since I used a new hatchet head for the start, I had a lot of extra steel to work with for a smaller axe, and it was very hard to work out the shape I wanted from it since it needed a lot of modifying, might've honestly been easier to make one from scratch. Honestly I ground most of what's seen in the final product, but spent a few hours of forging beforehand to get a rough shape going. Please feel free to leave HONEST feedback! I know it isn't that great and I want to hear that! Honesty helps, criticism will make me better! As a beginner with very low experience, criticism and honesty will really make me better! Also suggestions on how I can modify it before I mount it on a handle, I plan on using epoxy so yes It might be "permanent"! The top picture is day 2 (earlier today) of my work, and the second is (obviously) my work at the end of day 2 (later today)

Hey guys, as a beginner, forging for only a few weeks with only a few finished knives, I decided to maybe do a modification rather than a knife from scratch. Can't say it's good so far but after about 30 minutes in day 1 I'd say it's a start! I'd love to hear some honest feedback, how to make it better, and if it's a good start! Please no nasty comments, I'm very new at this and would like critique and not harshness, thanks! I'll continue to post my progress, may take a while to complete! Also, if I sprinkle some borax on the axe before I decide to treat it, will it make it look cleaner? I've heard that

Ok so as I mentioned in my last post I screwed up making a handheld viking style hatchet, so I went to Lowes and picked up a pretty cheap wood handle hatchet. It's not a bad hatchet, but the handle is on there good and I don't really want to ruin the handle or make it unusable incase the other handle can't be fit on. So I was wondering if anybody had suggestions for how I could get this handle out, most likely epoxy used too. Epoxy I could just heat up and soften it, but I have to loosen the wood first. I'm fine with drilling into the handle and patching it up later with glue or something, but I don't really want to cut the handle off because I may use it again. Below I posted three pictures showing the unique wedge in the handle (That doesn't really look removable) as well as the shoulder that appears to have glue on it...any ideas? Thanks

Hello! Some time ago I have started the project of wolf teeth spearhead that Niels Provos had posted, and I discovered that in the middle of process So firstly, I want to show you ready spearhead, and then photos of process of forging step by step. Please enjoy and comment The spearhead's socket is 21cm long and blade is 45cm long and 7cm wide, socket is forge welded from old iron, blade is made of 50HF spring steel and low carbon S235 steel. Each teeth is welded from separate piece of tooth. Firstly , I drew the project in the 1:1 scale with every dimension: Then I cut the pieces from steel sheet for blades, twist and core. I used S235 and 50HF 2mm steel sheet. Billets ready for welding, 2 on the right are made of 20-layer only 50HF steel, next is made of 16 layer S235/50HF for twist and the last one on the left is made of 26-layer S235/50HF billet for the core. Now after the first welding, everything is ready for cleaning and cutting. The bar for blades was cut in 5 pieces, so after welding it has 100 layers, The billet for twist was cut into 2 pieces and there was added a solid piece of 50HF steel in the middle, and the bar for core was cut into 4 pieces, so after welding it has around 100 layers. the bars are ready and the longest one will be twisted into 4 separate pieces, on the left there is the test piece for socket to check the dimensions that i need for welding. Preparation of core, shorter pieces are made of s235, loger ones of 50HF steel for contrast. The bars for blades are cut into 3 pieces each, so now they will have 300 layers.. Core is ready and 2 billets are made of 2 pieces of twist There are 2 pieces of welded twist and a piece of bar made of old iron After cleaning and cutting I made a billet from old iron,and also I cut the twist and welded it on the core. The twist was welded with core, and old iron plate for socket is ready. I forged the blade bars into square, 2cmx2cm. Now i forge the shape of blades, after that I cut the teeth in it, and from the piece of round bar s235 I forged the bar, grinded it to shape that matches the teeth grooves, cut it into small pieces, placed it into the grooves and welded it to the blade. There you can see all of the pieces that were used for the welded spearhead. On the right there is the mandrel for welding the socket. Teeth welded into the blade bars. All of the pieces for the blade are welded and ready to forge, The plate for socket is cut and cleaned. And this is the blade after welding it into one piece. There is the plate after rolling it on the mandrel. And this is how it looks after welding process. I welded on the swage block, before welding I heated the mandrel up to the orange temperature, and when socket reached welding temperature, I placed the mandrel inside it and welded it on the swage block, after each welding I removed the mandrel, heated up the socket and so on. Then I welded the socket into the rest of the spearhead, grinded it and heat treated. This is how it looks after the heat treating. And ready for etching the spearhead. Regards, Rafał Garbacik.

Good evening everyone! This is the latest knife I am making, and I´d like to share the process with you I decided to focus more on making knives as a whole, not only blades. That is not to say I am stopping blades, but I deffinitely want to finish more pieces It all started with me having a blade I really liked, and a piece of curly maple: I really wanted to do something in Urnes style which... I didn´t Somehow I am always drawn to the Ringerike style! In this case, the brooch below, particulary the beast portraited there, caught my eye... And so it began... I am still uncertain as to what the animal is, but for me, it resembles a wolf... I started drawing it, to get the details as close to the original as I am able. I changed one thing - I really didn´t like the legs of the beast in the brooch, so I looked at other ringerike animals and changed them a littlebit... Also, I tuned the tail a bit so that it fits the frame of the handle better: I decided to carve the beast first, it being the most difficult for me to carve, and therefore the most likely to be ruined. So, if there should be a ruinage, i wanted it to be as close to the beginning of the handle as possible... but, everything seems okay (well, there are always the little things that bug you, aren´t there ) and i finished the main carving just as the sun was setting... I found it rather poetical... and then I remebered a story from Northern Mythology, about a warg who chases after the sun, named Sköll. The dusk came, and the warg appeared in the handle... I ensnared it! No more chasing the sun, now it will serve the user of the knife! I apologize for the bad uality of the last shot... Well, I wanted to make sure that Sköll will not break out of his prison, so I added cage around him (also, there is a flattened and ground piece of wrought I intend to use for a buttcap): And this is where I finished today - now I am grinding micrometer after micrometer so that the buttcap fits as well as possible . Yeah, I could have done it before the carving, but I was never much of a planner : Goodnight!

Hello! I would like to offer my latest knife. The story if its creation can be followed here: It is a knife with a blade made of four bars - wrought iron, patternwelded rod of 9 layers, wrought iron again and high carbon steel on edge.The handle is ashen, hand-carved in ringerike style, the motif taken and adjusted from an 11th century brooch. At the end of the handle is a wrought iron butt cap and a loop, housing a brass ring decorated with triangles made of punched small 1mm circles. Also, there is a leather strap to make the pulling of the knife easier. The sheath features an antler plate decorated in the same style, the motif coming from a weather vane found on Gotland. There is a decorated brass ring too, ready for a strap attaching it to the belt. The rest of the sheath is sewn using a hand woven flax string, and there are three wrought iron clamps to add a bit of a bling . The OAL of the knife is 22cms, blade length is 10,6cm. I am asking 500USD/443E for this one

hey guys this isn't a blade but I thought I might share some of these forged steel strikers I've made. I got an order for some a few days ago and I really enjoyed making them. I made the smaller one for myself and the larger one was part of an order. Tell me what you guys think! -Jeff Fogleboch

Good morrow, fellow smiths. I present for your consideration my first attempt at a small (one-handed) battle axe in the Viking mode. If I did my research right, this should be something like a Petersen type C axe, though I'm not going to try to claim historical accuracy on this one because the eye shape is a tomahawk-style teardrop, and because it's made of one solid chunk of steel. I documented the whole process so that those of you who know more than I do can critique it, and hopefully it will of value to those of you who are looking to get into axe-making. Anyway, without further ado, the pictures: Starting off. For the love of Weyland, get fresh steel bar stock if you can. Forging a jeep axle into a rectangular bar by hand is terrible. The blank. It weighs about a pound and a half, and is about 1x1.25x4.5" (don't quote me on that, I forgot to measure it). I've upset the lefthand end a bit to give me more flare for the beard. I also tried to keep the top side of the bar flat while upsetting, because I want a much greater curve on the bottom than on the top. Starting to punch the eye. In the past I have slit the eyes, but I have found that punching gives me tidier ends on the eye. This punch, as it turns out, is actually too big for my drift. I usually start punching/slitting on the top side of the bar, because for whatever reason the side of the hole that I punch first seems to get larger than the side I punch second. Hole and slug. Opening the hole. Usually right after this I will start using the drift to do most of the eye shaping, but I knew that my eye hole was too big and that it wasn't going to take much forging to size it, so I moved on to forging out the bit. After getting the bit profiled, I drew out the langets a bit on the horn of the anvil. You can use the drift to do this, too, but the drift cools the axe head very quickly and shortens your forging window. I try to do as little work as possible with the axe on the drift. Also, if you're not careful, you can get teh axe head stuck pretty solidly on the drift as it cools. It's bad, m'kay? Final sizing of the eye, and doing the last bit of tweaking to make sure the blade is square to the body and handle. Profiling with files. I wanted a sort of filed finish on this one, so the vast majority of shaping was done by hand. Also, my grinder is not set up in such a way as to allow me to grind the large flats of an axe like this. The axe head ready for heat-treatment. I eventually decided to trim a bit off the edge towards the toe to improve things aesthetically. The eye did get a little wonky because the drift wasn't quite big enough, but I managed to compensate with some creative filework. Stay tuned for part 2: Making and fitting the haft.

So, I think this is the right place to put this. I found an interesting video on the YouTube channel Shadiversity regarding what we commonly call the "Viking sword," and whether or not that is an acceptable name. No endorsement implied, but I find his logic and proposals interesting, and he puts out some cool videos from time to time. I was curious, as makers, how folks here feel about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wyk2SJw39Z4 Hope I did that link right. First time posting from Chrome.

This is a very special sword for me, as it both ends and starts the year. This was the last blade I quenched at 2016 and the first piece I finished in 2017. So it is kinda different. Forn Hrafn, or Old Raven is made to resemble a humble sword from the beginning of the ninth century Norway. This sword was made by stock removal (not forging, guys) from a piece of 1070 steel. It is heavily inspired on C10560 from Kulturhistorisk Museum from Norway. As I didn't have access to more material about this find, I used some of it's measures and invented others. As you can see on the pictures, it is not completely straight. The tang of some original single-edged viking swords have a slightly curve in relation to the blade and after looking at several examples, I think it was made on purpose, so the tip of the blade could be aligned with the tang. This would make them more useful for trusts. Also, the blade itself bent a little bit towards it's edge after the quench. Had it happen with a double-edged blade it would be discarded, but as some originals have this very same curve, I decided to keep on the project. The blade tapers both in profile and distal to about 75-80% of the original width and thickness at 15cm from the tip. The hilt was fire etched to look like forged and the blade was aged using salt water, vinegar and ferric chloride. The scabbard is made of pine wood, covered outside and lined inside with natural wool cloth. The belt bridge is a piece of ancient bog oak, around 6000 years old, from Ukraine and is held in place by some glue and leather cord. The raven decoration is not made in any particular norse artistic style, but rather made to look like some naive work. This fits the whole piece as being product of unskilled or cheap work, as presumably were these type F viking swords. The handle is also pinewood, wrapped with veg-tanned bovine leather. If you like storytelling, there is also a small tale I wrote for the sword that can be read here: http://vferreiraarruda.blogspot.com.br/2017/01/forn-hrafn-single-edged-viking-sword.html Overall length: 93,0cm Blade length: 78,5cm Blade width: 5,5cm Blade thickness at the guard: 0,5cm PoB: 17,5cm Lower guard width: 10,0cm Length of the grip: 9,8cm Weight: 1,390kg

Here's my Norse reenactment getup, It's about 80% made by me. Its the best I can do so far. The tunic, undertunic, belts, buckles, pouch(deerskin), leg wrappings (are a WiP), knife sheath(lambskin or deerskin sewn inside out and reversed it was a pain in the behind), knife, the tiny copper brooch by my collar were all made by me. The overtunic is 100% wool except for the cotton thread stitching, with tablet woven wool trim I had ordered. Under tunic is undyed linen Pants are linen, I only dyed them. shoes also bought(I gave up on trying to make them) the sword is just some production one I own and rehilted. you may ignore it. And a big thanks to my friend Christine who took the photos for me. (I should have taken off that bloody date and time option on the camera gahhh!)

I've been putzing around at bladesmithing now as a hobby for 8 years and I figured it was time to get off my butt and make my first sword. As many people know, I have a fairly large collection of original viking era artifacts, and I love that period and the styles. I figured that for making my first sword it's not that much more work to make it pattern welded than it is to make it monosteel. One sword that I've always loved was the Type K sword in the Universitetets Oldsaksamling, Oslo (C11014) as depicted in Ian Pierce's book. I really like the shape of that blade, long parallel sides with the well defined fuller in the center, and the classic well defined 5 lobbed pommel. My goal for this blade is to be similar dimensions, with a blade around 30 inches long and about 2.125 to 2.25 inches wide, but I want my first viking sword to be pattern welded. Since the original is type K from the 9th century a pattern welded blade is appropriate still. I started this a little over a month ago, but my shop time has sucked, as I've been getting my little British sports cars ready for show season which starts tomorrow. I welded up the initial cores on my forging press and then moved to my hammer to start drawing it out. Stupidly I forgot to write down how many layers my core billet it, but I think it was 9. It's 1084 and 15N20, although the 15N20 is thinner than I wanted, and I think I'd have preferred if the two metals were closer in thickness when I started. The two core bars are interrupt twisted in opposing directions. The two outer layers are just straight 1084. After coming off the forging press and going to the hammer, I immediately found that my weld in the center hadn't held at the end, and while I was re-heating it to re-weld, I thought that I'd clamp my phone in my vice and do a little video. So here's a youtube video I took about a month ago, re-welding the tip of the billet. This is my first project really using the power hammer, and I'm still getting used to the control and speed. Watching my own video, I'm painfully awkward with the treadle, as I hadn't got it adjusted where I like it yet =) I've got a lot better with the hammer now! =P This afternoon I picked up where I left off and continued drawing out the billet. I first took it to 18 inches long by 1.25 wide and about 5/8 thick. At this point my propane tank froze up, so I took a break and let it cool down. With the billet cooled down, and while I still had a lot of thickness, I took a saw and cut a V in the tip so that I could close up the tip and make the edge billet meet up and wrap around. After sawing it open I took a file and tried to smooth everything out as best I could so that when I closed up the mouth it would be as tight a fit as possible. Even prior to welding it shut, it was hard to see the line of the two halves after I closed up the tip The tip welded up nicely and I went back to the power hammer and kept drawing out the billet. My tank froze up again, and is almost out of gas, so I need to get both my tanks refilled before I continue. The billet is now 26 inches long by 2 inches wide and 3/8 thick. Right now I'm hoping that I have enough material to get it as long as I want, at this point I need to just stretch it out length wise, because forging in the fuller in the center, and then the bevels should give me the width that I'm looking for. Here's a closeup of the tip which seems nice and solid after welding it up, and didn't once try to split apart on me.

Hey, folks. This knife was a real pleasant work to do. Although unexpected, it came out better than I could have imagined. About the blade, it was handforged with a wrought iron spine and a bloom steel edge. The bloom was made by accident when I was trying to produce some shear steel with a wrought iron bar. The iron box in witch the wrought iron was simply melted down and so did the wrought, and then it all became a strange looking bloom with just a little slag from the refractory mantle that melted too. Then I refined it and found a very good amount of carbon in it. After that I covered it in clay and quenched in brine. You can see the hardened line quite well. The handle is made of a karelian birch burl. The pin holding the ring holder is iron, the holder is nickel silver and the ring itself is brass. The tang was glued to the handle using a pine resin based glue. The sheath was the most laborious part of it all. It is made out of vegetable tanned cow's leather, about 2mm thick. Then it was tooled with Borre styles mottifs on the front and geometric patterns on the back. The fittings are made from nickel silver, with brass rings and iron rivets to add some contrast. This is by far the best knife I made till now and I'm kind of proud of it and I hope you like it as well. Any advices and critics will be very welcome. Overall: 25,5cm (including the holder, without the ring) Blade length: 13,7cm Blade width: 2,0cm at the widest part Blade thickness: 0,5cm

Hey guys here is a small Viking axe I just finished. It's made from 1018/W2. This was my first time making an axe and forge welding so it isn't perfect. I have a few delaminations but overall I like it. Tell me what you think and I would appreciate critiques and advice. Thanks!

3 Fighting axes inspired by the Viking style. Mild steel bodies with bearing race edges forge-welded in. $175 each. Email adriaang66@gmail.com

I have been commissioned to make a sax for a person who plays in the SCA. His persona is that of a Rus trader and he wanted something sufficiently "viking" and with a bear theme. So... The requirements are about 7" in the blade, dark wood handle of a wood native to that region of the world, "Gotland" style sheath and, a bear theme. He also mentioned that he is hard on knives and has broken several in the past. After a bit of back and forth we settled on a Borre style of art for the fittings and sheath. The first thing I did was look for Norse bear motifs. There are not many. The first one I found was this illustration of a "grave marker" found in Brampton, England and dated to the 6th Century. Not quite from the area I was looking for, wrong area and time. Then I found a photograph of bear shaped "grave markers" from Yorkshire, England also dated to the 6th Century. One of them looks like the illustration. Next were a pair of carved jet bears, also from Yorkshire, and dated to the 8th Century. Closer in time. I just was not finding what I needed and so I started looking at the art of some other ethnic groups of people that the Rus traders might have had contact with. I found this bear in the Permic style from Finnland. Pretty cool but, not exactly Borre. The Scythians also yielded a bear image. Somewhere in there I got lucky and stumbled upon this antique for sale. It was listed as a "viking borre style bear heads concave disc mount." Closer but, not sure I could use something like this on a knife. Maybe I could use one of the bears heads as a thematic element. Last was this belt mount from Armour and Castings. When I first ran across this image it was on an outdated website that did not give any information on provenence and time frame. Later on I found the newer website where it is listed as being from Iskorosten, Russia and dating from the 10th century. At last, something from exactly the right place and time. ~Bruce~